Holiday excess!

I think I am now sufficiently recovered from the Holiday Period to finally discuss it. To explain why we didn't go back to Singapore despite the lingering heartsickness - I haven't been home in a year! That's the longest time I've ever spent away.

So anyway, as I mentioned before, my brother was coming down to visit over the Christmas period. Now this would be an unremarkable occurence in and of itself.. Relatives often come and visit and stay over and all that sort of thing but my brother, no... my brother had to come with drama attached. Not much baggage, but drama! Argh family. What can you do? Or as I said to my mum, your progeny lah! what did you do to him? But I think she knew I was just kidding around in exasperation. So anyway, in preparation for my errant brother's imminent arrival, we had to Clean The House. It is just as well that no one apart from Bear and myself knew exactly what an undertaking that was. Practically heroic I think - especially the episode with Bear and the Bathroom. Bear is my hero! Also, it probably didn't help that our guest room was then being used to house Monty and Alfie, who'd come here to escape life with someone who was using them to breed little baby ratties for snakefood! *aghast* Anyway, they got their own room, and as may be expected, they made it their own.

So that took a weekend, and that's when it started I suppose, the ohmigod we only have 24 hours in a day and we have to do this and this and that and drive here and pick up that and call so and so and... Amazing the number of things we accomplished in the week up till Christmas. Thank goodness we were both on leave! We even forgot to eat dinner a few times... It would be like midnight and Bear would say Hey I'm Hungry and I'd be like, Hey We Haven't Had Dinner.... Have We?

Even when Qiao came down from Dubai (yay!) and I tried to cunningly include her arrival into our tightly packed plans - i.e. "Come over and help us bake cookies!", it was only because it was Qiao and she was hungry and not one to be polite for the sake of nothing that we actually went to dinner that night! And she paid - Qiao is also my hero! heheheh.

But yes. Somehow, we cleaned up a rather large house that was in a bit of a state, hosted a brother (who was intent on carrying out his unpopular plans), drove him around without imposing our judgement upon him, made plans for imminent post-Christmas trip to Singapore, tried to collect items requested of us from parents in Singapore, purchased ingredients for and baked 5 different types of cookies (thank goodness they were all yummy!), sorted out undelivered packages, bought appropriate presents for all of Bear's family and friends, fixed Bear's car for registration, purchased and picked up large second hand cage for Monty and Alfie from really-far-away-place, organised rattie sitting for Singapore trip, organised tickets for Singapore trip, planned Christmas dinner (with Qiao and Gloria and Adrian!) and bought all the food in preparation for it and then actually got through Christmas Day without exploding...

I promised Bear he wouldn't have to do anything on Boxing Day. And I mostly kept my promise - he only had to sit in the car as I drove my brother to the airport, and when I drove over to send Qiao off and pass over her beanbag (which we had both forgotten about but that's what cleaning up is all about!)... and then we went home. To rest.

That evening, we noticed that Kimi was uncharacteristically lethargic, and his breathing was awfully short and sharp, and that you could see his body heaving with every breath.